Tag Archives: traffic

Advanced SEO Requires Good Analytics Information

Posted on by
Reply

Good quality analytics (such as Google Analytics or another paid analytics software packages) provides good and very useful information. If you pay attention to it you could very quickly increase the overall efficiency of your website. You just have to look at the numbers and list to what they tell you. The proof is in the pudding as they say and if you ignore your analytics information you could be missing out on a great deal of potential business and traffic. Here are some basic areas for you to review in order to find any holes in your website and to help you decipher data that you learn from your analytics: Conversions: In case you don’t know, a conversion is a completed action on your website, such as lead, sign up, sale, etc.  The most important factor (I think) to learn from your analytics software is the conversion data.  Understanding and learning about how and where you conversions come from can help you make much more educated and better SEO, PPC and Social Media marketing decisions.  I can’t tell you how many people I still speak to think that the best goal for an SEO campaign is rankings or positioning.  Sorry to break it to you, but it is not.  Increasing conversions (and visitor growth) should be the starting goal(s) of your SEO and search marketing efforts.  I won’t get too deep into that as that is not the main point of this post J Bounce Rate: Whether you are looking at this overall or down to a single page if your bounce rate is really high try to figure out what is turning people off from that web page. It could be a variety of things depending on your business so take a deep look at your page. Is it too much info? Or a lack of info? Do you have too many ads on that specific page? It could also be a combination of all these items. It might just be that your page needs to have a serious over haul.  Bounce rates vary for each client and industry but understanding what yours is and try to improve your bounce rate is very important. Visitors: When you start to really get into advanced SEO techniques you will need to understand even more so where all of your visitors are coming from. Visitor quality is just as important as visitor growth. You never want to rely on just one stream of traffic because if that stream dries up so does your business. You have to understand where your traffic is coming from because often times it might be from an area that you least expected it to come from. Analytics information allows you to find new locations along with locations of where you might be able to place yourself to find new traffic. Keywords: Analytics information will tell you what keywords your website traffic is using to find your website. This is a potential to really open things up for you as you grow your business online. As new keywords develop you can capitalize by finding new variations on those specific keywords and using them throughout your website. You have to look at your analytics information very closely otherwise you won’t find those windows of opportunity to help improve your SEO and overall search marketing efforts. Analytics keeps your approach to marketing your website efficient and smooth. It is all about finding opportunities that could already exist right in front of you. Data and information that you can get from your analytics allows you to find those areas where you can really maximize your efforts in the online world. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Advanced SEO Requires Good Analytics

5 Types of Link Building

Posted on by
Reply

There are many reasons to build links to your website, and sometimes, it is hard to determine if one link is better than another, or if it is worth anything at all. For example, a dofollow link is better than a nofollow for some purposes, but not for others. And a redirected link may hold no value for SEO, but may still prove valuable. Here are the types of links that you can build to your website, and why you should take advantage of a mixture of each. Traffic Generating

2 Great WordPress Plugins to Find Your Blog Most Powerful Pages

Posted on by
Reply

Learning which of your published content did particularly well based on some parameters is a great way to become a more successful blogger. This way you can see which of your posts are well received in social media, which of them get linked more and which of them spur a more active discussion. This week I am sharing the two best WordPress plugins that will offer you a huge variety of parameters to evaluate your posts: Blog Link & Traffic Analysis Plugin for WordPress This plugin digs into your blog posts and offers several variables to find the most powerful of them: post date page views per post in the previous 3 months inbound links (requires Yahoo Site Explorer Yahoo API which is quite easy to receive) Google bot visits (last visit and number of visits) Yahoo bot visits (last visit and number of visits) MSN bot visits (last visit and number of visits) Other bot visits You can sort by any of the column to find the pages that did best for any of the criteria. For example, if you want to find post with most backlinks, click > icon in the “Inbound Links” column: The best part of this plugin is that it gives you the ability to compare any of the variables side by side. For example, you can see how number of links effects the bot visits and traffic: Just a quick note: you will need to update the link count manually and the process takes quite some time, so you don’t want to do that too often. Popularity Contest for WordPress This plugin provides a wealth of information on how well your posts are doing. 1. The summarized popularity data: The first thing you’ll see is the table containing the following data: Post unique views; Category and archive views, Comments, Trackbacks, etc (I wish the table were sortable though) 2. Recently popular pages : the section allows to see most popular posts over the past 30, 60 and 90 days as well over the past year. 3. Most viewed pages and categories : Most viewed pages; Most viewed categories; Most viewed tags; Most viewed archives; Home page views; Feed views; 4. Reactions: Most commented posts; Posts with most trackbacks; Posts with most pingbacks; 5. Averages: Average popularity by category; Average popularity by tag; Average popularity by month. 6. Popular posts within each category. The plugin also offers a handy sidebar widget that allows to list your blog most popular posts by plenty of parameters including overall popularity, archive views, comments, etc: The widget also has quite a few options that allow to exclude views by authors, (dis)able showing the popularity rank of the posts, set the search engines, adjust the popularity values, etc: Notes: The plugin gave me an error on installation but when I left the installation screen it appeared to be working just fine; After installation you will notice that new posts are much more popular than old ones. Since home and feed views have not been recorded for old posts, they won’t be ranked as highly as new posts. Any other suitable plugins I have missed? Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . 2 Great WordPress Plugins to Find Your Blog Most Powerful

Once You Start, Can You Stop?

Posted on by
Reply

Warning: Link building is addictive. It’s like working out. Once you get going and you see results, you want to keep on. You want to do more and more but what happens if you slow down or stop your efforts? With exercise, you’ll gain weight again, most likely. With links, it’s not as straightforward. Will stopping, or slowing down, raise a red flag? Will your past results look like they came about through spammy efforts? Will your current results remain in place when there’s no more actively driven effort? Here’s the thing about basic SEO…there are principles in place that, once enacted, can indeed produce excellent results. Theoretically, if you did practice good SEO and you optimized your site perfectly, you should rank highly and stay there. However, this rarely happens. The industry changes, as we’ve most recently seen with the amazing popularity of social media. That alone has caused many people to rethink their marketing strategies. People also game the system. Thus, if you sit around not doing a whole lot, you’re going to get passed by, and quickly. With link building, things can get extra complicated. Look at any backlink history graph and, chances are, you’ll see something that makes you wonder what exactly happened at a specific point. Why are there spikes? What happened? You’ve probably done the same thing with traffic in your analytics package. That’s because, in most cases, there was something that occurred to cause a blip of some sort. Since link building is such a well known and much abused marketing tactic, it’s only natural that this might raise a red flag. Stopping a full-scale link building effort can easily produce one of these weird little points in time on your graph. Conversely, people DO become addicted to links. They want more and more and more, never thinking about what will happen when they do slow down. If links aren’t pursued with traffic in mind, only rankings, the traffic isn’t going to match the massive increase in links most likely. That’s a bit of a red flag, don’t you think? One of the problems with always wanting more is that you end up with a strict quantity mindset. You want 50 more links, but you don’t stop to think about alternate ways to get them, or different pages to work on, or anchor text variations. You just want more links. As you probably know, all links are not the same. You can get a massive boost in rankings from one fantastic authority link, and the traffic that comes with a link like that can equal what you’d get from 1000 crappy little links on blogs that no one ever sees. So my answer is no, you can’t stop. You shouldn’t stop. However, keep going for the right reasons and don’t just get greedy. Recognize that link building is a continual effort but that, with the right links, it can certainly be easier than if you do it poorly. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Once You Start, Can You

Google Off to a Great Year, Gains $6.7 Billion in Q1

Posted on by
Reply

Google has again proven its might as it reports its Q1 2010 revenue growth at 23% compared to the same period in 2009. Total reported revenue for the quarter ending March 31 is at $6.77 billion. Traffic Acquisition Cost (TAC) amounted to $1.71 billion or 26% of advertising revenues. Despite suffering from a decline in stocks prices, Google however managed to beat the Wall Street expectations. Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google has issued the following statements regarding their first quarter financial report. “Google performed very well in the first quarter, with 23% year over year revenue growth driven by strength across all major verticals and geographies,” said Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google. Some key highlights of Google’s Q1 2010 Financial Report are as follow: Revenues – Google reported revenues of $6.77 billion in the first quarter of 2010, representing a 23% increase over first quarter 2009 revenues of $5.51 billion. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting TAC. Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $4.44 billion, or 66% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2010. This represents a 20% increase over first quarter 2009 revenues of $3.69 billion. Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.04 billion, or 30% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2010. This represents a 24% increase from first quarter 2009 network revenues of $1.64 billion. Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 15% over the first quarter of 2009 and increased approximately 5% over the fourth quarter of 2009. Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 7% over the first quarter of 2009 and decreased approximately 4% over the fourth quarter of 2009. TAC – Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $1.71 billion in the first quarter of 2010, compared to TAC of $1.44 billion in the first quarter of 2009. TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 26% in the first quarter of 2010, compared to 27% in the first quarter of 2009. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Off to a Great Year, Gains $6.7 Billion in